Reading Poetry Quotes

• Reading poetry is an adventure in renewal, a creative act, a perpetual beginning, a rebirth of wonder.

  Edward Hirsch

  Reading, Adventure, Creative

  Edward Hirsch (1999). “How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry”, p.18, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

  Khalil Gibran

  Pain, Joy, Wonder

  Khalil Gibran “The New Frontier and Sand and Foam”, Library of Alexandria

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• If I read a book and it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry.

  Emily Dickinson

  Book, Fire, Body

  Quoted in Martha Bianchi, Life and Letters of Emily Dickinson (1924)

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• Poetry is language at its most distilled and most powerful.

  Rita Dove

  Powerful, Language, Poetry Reading

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• Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.

  James Tate

  Editing, Needs, Poetry Reading

  James Tate (1999). “The route as briefed”, Univ of Michigan Pr

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• We all write poems; it is simply that poets are the ones who write in words.

  John Fowles

  Writing, Poetry, Poet

  1969 The French Lieutenant's Woman, ch.19.

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• Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power.

  Paul Engle

  Language And Power, Ordinary, Tough Skin

  New York Times, February 17, 1957.

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• Even though poetry was written for the 'minds ear' as well as the physical ear, the minds ear can be trained only by the other ... which comes back to reading poetry aloud.

  Yvor Winters

  Reading, Mind, Ears

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• Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.

  T. S. Eliot

  Art, Writing, Immature

  The Sacred Wood "Philip Massinger" (1920)

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• Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

  Don Marquis

  Education, Learning, Knowledge

  Don Marquis, William McCollum (1982). “Selected letters of Don Marquis”, Northwoods Pr

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  I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Love, Valentines Day, Cute Boyfriend

  1850 Poems,'Sonnets from the Portuguese', sonnet 43.

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• Poetry should surprise by a fine excess and not by singularity, it should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.

  John Keats

  Inspirational, Remembrance, Literature

  Letter to John Taylor, 27 February 1818, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 238

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• Poetry is ordinary language raised to the Nth power. Poetry is boned with ideas, nerved and blooded with emotions, all held together by the delicate, tough skin of words.

  Paul Engle

  Ideas, Skins, Together

  New York Times, February 17, 1957.

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• Let me not to the marriage of true minds

  William Shakespeare

  Love, Mind, Wedding Ceremony

  Sonnet 116

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• i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)

  e. e. cummings

  Love, Relationship, Valentines Day

  E. E. Cummings (2013). “Like a perhaps hand: Poems. Gedichte”, p.45, C.H.Beck

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• All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling.

  Oscar Wilde

  Spring, Book, Reading

  Oscar Wilde (2005). “The Prose of Oscar Wilde”, p.186, Cosimo, Inc.

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  Two roads diverged in a wood and I - I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.

  Robert Frost

  Inspirational, Motivational, Happiness

  "The Road Not Taken" l. 16 (1916)

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• How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

  Elizabeth Barrett Browning

  Marriage, Sweet Love, Educational

  Sonnets from the Portuguese no. 43 (1850)

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• Reading [poetry], you know, is rather like opening the door to a horde of rebels who swarm out attacking one in twenty places at once - hit, roused, scraped, bared, swung through the air, so that life seems to flash by; then again blinded, knocked on the head - all of which are agreeable sensations for a reader (since nothing is more dismal than to open the door and get no response).

  Virginia Woolf

  Reading, Air, Doors

  Virginia Woolf (2017). “The Essays of Virginia Woolf, Volume 5: 1929 - 1932”, p.298, Random House

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• The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming.

  Cheryl Strayed

  Jobs, Sex, Reading

  Cheryl Strayed (2013). “Tiny Beautiful Things: Advice on Love and Life from Someone Who’s Been There”, p.248, Atlantic Books Ltd

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• I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy.

  Laurie Halse Anderson

  Reading, Recovery, Kissing

  Laurie Halse Anderson (2009). “Wintergirls”, p.207, Penguin

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• I've been reading poetry publicly for 20 years, and this is what you do - you express, you sometimes dig a bit to get a conversation started. That's the point of poetry. You're supposed to go, 'Hmmmm,' and 'Woooh!'

  Jill Scott

  Reading, Years, Sometimes

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• In Australia, not reading poetry is the national pastime.

  Phyllis McGinley

  Reading, Australia Day, Pastime

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• I'm a failed poet. Reading poetry helps me to see the world differently, and I try to infuse my prose with figurative language, which goes against the trend in fiction.

  Jesmyn Ward

  Reading, Trying, Fiction

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• Reading poetry gives me a sense of calm, well-being, and love for humanity - the same stuff more flexible women get from yoga.

  J. Courtney Sullivan

  Yoga, Reading, Giving

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